The Shadow Queen
by SilvertonguedSerpent1895
Summary: Athena Hatori has always been smart. After all, her mother named her after the Greek goddess of wisdom. When she heads off to Ouran for high school, she meets a girl named Haruhi Fujioka, whom everyone seems to think is a boy. While getting to know Haruhi, as neither of them has many friends, the Shadow Queen attracts the attention of a certain "Cool type", but it's not just him...
1. Welcome to the Host Club

**A/N: Yay! A new story! Nah, I'm just kidding. I'm not actually that perky. Well, here ya go. Leave a review so I know what you think. Oh, and this story will be mostly in Athena POV. If you don't know who she is, read the summary.**

* * *

7:15 AM

"Athena!" My mom yelled from down the hall. "It's time to get up! You don't want to be late for school!"

"Yeah, yeah." I muttered as I walked into the kitchen. "I don't see why I have to go to this stupid prep school anyway. It's just going to be full of snobby rich kids who think that the world gets handed to them on a silver platter."

"Come on, perk up." My mom handed me a muffin. "Who knows? Maybe you'll meet someone there."

"Oh, I'm sure I'll meet lots of people. Not that any of them will be nice, of course." I savagely ripped off a chunk of the banana chocolate chip goodness in my hand.

"Don't be so quick to judge. Give it a chance."

"Whatever, Mom."

* * *

9:30 AM

I sat in my classroom, sketching my favorite anime characters in my notebook. No one had made an effort to talk to me, and that was the way I liked it.

"Hey," I looked up, a little surprised that anyone was talking to me. No one ever talked to the new girl. I knew that one from experience. "Are you new here, too?"

The girl in front of me smiled. "I'm Haruhi Fujioka. What's your name?"

I quickly regained my composure and smiled back. "I'm Athena. Athena Hatori."

"That's a nice name." she said, sitting down.

"Thank you."

"What are you drawing?" she gazed down at my notebook.

"I don't really know, to be honest." I admitted.

"It's pretty." An awkward silence ensued, and we sat there quietly until the bell rang.

"Well, I'll see you later, then." I said.

Yeah. Bye." she smiled, then turned and walked down the hall._ I wonder why she wasn't wearing a uniform,_ I thought._ Maybe she's an honor student like me? That would be fantastic. I don't want to be surrounded by morons forever._

* * *

4:15 PM

The hallways were deserted as I left Library Room Four, irritated at how ridiculously loud these places were. _I can't believe that none of their freaking libraries are quiet._

"Hey, Athena!" a voice called from behind me. "Wait up!" I turned around, surprised to see Haruhi running in my direction.

"Hey, Haruhi. What's up?"

"I was just trying to find a quiet place to study. From the looks of it, you're doing the same thing."

"Yeah. Don't bother going in Library Room Four, by the way. It's a madhouse in there."

"Thanks for telling me." I started walking down the hall, and it wasn't long before Haruhi joined me.

"Hey, look." She pointed to a pair of grand doors just ahead of us.

"An abandoned music room, huh?" I asked.

"Looks like it."

"Well, let's see if anyone is inside." I tentatively stepped forward and we opened the door. A wave of rose petals flew forward from a blinding white light, and when it faded away, there was a group of ridiculously attractive men waiting for us.

"Welcome." they chorused as we stepped into the room and the grand doors flew closed behind us.

"This is a host club?" Haruhi asked, quivering against the door and scrabbling for the handle.

"Oh, wow. It's a boy." the two with orange hair said.

"Hikaru, Kaoru. I believe this young man is in the same class as you?" the one in glasses asked.

"Yeah, but he's shy. He doesn't act very sociably, so we don't know much about him." Hikaru and Kaoru replied.

"Well, that wasn't very polite." Glasses smiled. "Welcome to the Ouran Host Club, Mr. Honor Student, Miss... I'm terribly sorry. What did you say your name was?"

"I'm Athena Hatori." I said.

"What? You must be Haruhi Fujioka!" the tall blonde boy cried, standing up and leaning toward Haruhi. "You're the exceptional honor students we've heard about."

Haruhi immediately stopped trying to escape. "How did you know my name?"

"You're infamous." Glasses said. "It's not every day that two commoners gain entrance into our academy. You must have an audacious nerve to work hard enough to fight your way into this school as an honor student, Mr. Fujioka."

"Well, uh, thank you, I guess." Haruhi stammered. _They think she's a guy..._ I thought.

"You're quite welcome." The tall blonde wrapped his arm around her shoulder. "You're a hero to other poor people, Fujioka. You've shown the world that even a poor person can excel at an elite private academy." Haruhi tried to move away, but was quickly followed by Mr. Self-Absorbed. "It must be hard for you to constantly be looked down upon by others."

"I think you're taking this poor thing too far." she said, scooting away from him.

"Spurned, neglected. But that doesn't matter now." he continued as though he hadn't heard her, which he probably hadn't. "Long live the poor! We welcome you, poor man, to our world of beauty!"

"I'm out of here." Haruhi made her way towards the door.

"Hey! Come back here, Haru-chan! Athe-chan!" The little blonde boy grabbed our hands and spun us around. "You must be like super heroes or something! That's so cool!"

"I'm not a hero. I'm an honor student." She froze. "And who are you calling Haru-chan!"

"I'm sorry about that." I quickly apologized.

"Hey, Athe-chan. Do you wanna have some cake with me?" the little boy turned to me.

"I'll have some cake with you. What's your name?"

"I'm Mitsukuni Haninozuka, but you can call me Honey-senapi!" he was quickly all smiles.

"Well, Honey-senpai, let's go have some cake." I followed him over to a table, not really paying attention to the conversation going on by the doors.

We sat for a minute or two, quietly eating our cake. Just then, a loud crash rang through the room, and I jumped, quickly running over to see what happened. Haruhi was staring at a blue vase, which lay in pieces on the ground.

"Aww, we were going to feature that renaissance vase in an upcoming school auction." said Hikaru.

"Oh, now you've done it, commoner. The bidding on that vase was supposed to start at eight million yen." Kaoru told her.

"What?! Eight million yen?!" Haruhi cried, then began muttering. "How many thousand yen is that? How many thousands are in a million?" She turned to the twins. "Uh, I'm going to have to pay you back."

"With what money?" the twins almost laughed. "You can't even afford a school uniform."

"What's with that grubby outfit you've got on, anyway?" asked one of the twins.

"Well, what do you think we should do, Tamaki?" Glasses asked, inspecting the broken pieces of the vase.

"There's a famous saying you may have heard, Fujioka." Tamaki began, sitting down on what he clearly believed to be a throne, but was really just a regular chair. "When in Rome, you should do as the Romans do. Since you have no money, you can pay with your body."

I would've laughed at how freakishly suggestive that sounded, but thought it inappropriate, given the severity of the situation. "That means, starting today, you're the host club's dog."

Haruhi blanched, frozen in shock. She didn't respond to Tamaki's waving hand, and merely fell over when Honey-senapi poked her in the arm.


	2. Commoner's Coffee

4:23 PM

I was sitting on a windowsill in a corner of the club room, watching in bemusement as the fangirls fawned over Tamaki and the others.

"Um, Tamaki, what's your favorite song?" one of the girls surrounding the blonde idiot asked.

"What song? The one that reminds me of you, of course." he replied smoothly.

"I baked you a cake today," another said. "Would you like to taste it?"

He lifted her chin to look into her eyes. "Only if you'll feed it to me, darling."

"Oh, wow, you're so dreamy." She was blushing, though I don't understand why.

"May I have a word with you, Tamaki?" a redheaded girl on Tamaki's other side interrupted. I glared at her as she smiled at him; she struck me as a kind of meddling, sneaky, conniving little bitch, and I desperately wanted that cup she was holding to shatter and slice her hand open. He turned to look at her, surprised, and she set down her cup - intact, unfortunately - and continued. "I've recently heard that the Host Club is keeping a little kitten without a pedigree.

I clenched my hands into small fists so tightly that my knuckles turned white and my talonlike fingernails drew blood. _I_ know _she's not talking about Haruhi!_ I growled inwardly, resisting the urge to stand up and punch that stupid smirk right off her smug little face. Lucky for her, Tamaki came to Haruhi's defense, if only a little.

"I don't know if I'd call him that," he chuckled, then noticed Haruhi walking into the club room with a bag of groceries in her arms. "Speak of the devil. Thanks for doing the shopping, little piglet. Did you get everything on our list?"

_What the hell is he doing with his hand?_ I wondered. _It's like he's waving a finger gun at the ceiling. And did he really just call Haruhi a piglet? What's that even about?_

Haruhi seemed to be thinking along the same lines as me, because she mumbled, "What? Piglet?" and her eyebrow started to twitch as she sweatdropped. Though I couldn't hear her, I'm a master at lip reading.

"Hey, wait a minute," Tamaki seemed to notice something different about the coffee, though I couldn't see anything wrong with it. "What is this?"

"Just what it looks like. It's coffee." Haruhi replied, still a little irritated from the 'piglet' comment.

"I've never seen this brand before. Is this the kind that's already ground?" he asked.

"What do you mean? It's instant coffee." she explained, bemused that he'd never heard of it before.

"It's instant?" a couple of the fangirls asked in creepy synchronization, tilting their heads to the side with their closed - but relaxed - fists pressed together and raised in front of them in a way that I'd assume was meant to be endearing, but to me, came off as more pitiful and pleading than anything else.

"Whoa!" Tamaki exclaimed, eyes wide. "I've heard of this before. It's commoner's coffee! You just add hot water!"

The group of fangirls on the couch opposite Tamaki and the vapid, conniving demon girl with hair far too red to be naturally that color had grown considerably, and all of the girls had that same, stupid position and curious expression as the first two.

"I didn't know there was such a thing," one of them commented.

"So it's true, then. Poor people don't even have enough free time to grind their own coffee beans," another added, and all the girls behind the two who'd spoken nodded earnestly.

"Commoners are pretty smart," Kyoya noted from next to Haruhi, leaning forward to look at the coffee.

"100 grams for 300 yen?" Hikaru asked.

"That's a lot less than we normally pay." Kaoru added.

"I'll go back and get something else," Haruhi offered. "Excuse me for not buying you guys expensive coffee."

"No, I'll keep it." Tamaki raised a hand to signal to Haruhi that she was not to take the coffee back.

"Huh?" the fangirls gasped collectively.

"I'm going to give it a try," the blonde moron/self-proclaimed king said decisively, standing up with a hand on his hip. Everyone but me, Little Miss Firetruck - my nickname for the miserable, vomitous mass of a girl that had dared insult my friend - and Haruhi gasped in shock. "I will drink this coffee!" Tamaki declared, earning him applause from almost everyone in the room.

"Alright, Haruhi. Get over here and make some of this commoner's coffee," he ordered. I could almost hear her thoughts. _I hate all these damn rich people,_ she was thinking. It was written all over her face.

"Oh, Tamaki," Little Miss Firetruck chuckled. "Now you're taking the joke too far. Your palate won't be able to stomach that crap. You don't have to drink it just because he bought it."

"Huh?" Haruhi looked down at her.

"I'm sorry. I was talking to myself." LMF - Little Miss Firetruck - smiled up at Haruhi, who was at a loss for words.

"Um..." she mumbled.

"Haruhi!" Tamaki called.

"I'm coming," Haruhi mumbled.


End file.
